Scent of a woman
by cein
Summary: Tony has to focus on one of his senses in order to help solve a case


Title: Scent of a woman  
Character(s): Tony, Gibbs, Vance, Abby  
Genre(s):/gen  
Notes: Written for round 4.04 of the NCIS_LFWS on LJ  
Prompt: 5 Senses: This must be a GEN fic, where a member of the team is forced to use one of their five senses in a situation where they would normally be using all 5. The 5 senses are touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing. Some of you may ask why the character can't use their other senses, use your imgination. Are they impaired in someway? Have they been hurt?

* * *

"So what can you tell us, Tony?"

Gibbs's voice was more gentle than Tony could ever remember being directed towards him. It was somewhat unsettling. But as he reminded himself, he was the victim here, a potential witness, and not an investigator. And he hated it. Hated being this side of the table. It didn't matter that it was a debriefing rather than an interrogation, Tony needed to be the person asking the questions, not answering them. Especially when he couldn't give the answers that Gibbs needed to hear.

"Like I said when you picked me up, Boss," Tony ran a hand wearily through his hair. "When I came to, they had a blindfold on me. Didn't come off until they dumped me in the alley."

######

"What does NCIS know about the embezzlement?" The voice cut through the silent darkness that had surrounded Tony since his return to consciousness. He would have jumped involuntarily if he hadn't been securely bound to the chair.

"Embezzlement?" Tony plastered a smile on his face. "You must have the wrong guy. My team is just looking into some unpaid parking tickets. But if you want to confess to some embezzlement, I'll be happy to take down your particulars."

* * *

"What about the voice? Was it a man or a woman?" Vance's tone was somewhat less gentle than Gibbs's had been. Tony appreciated that. If Vance had been treating him with kid gloves, Tony would have really felt like he'd fallen down the rabbit hole. Not that he was feeling all that centered as it was. A combination of the blow to the head which had landed him in the clutches of his abductors, and the stun gun they'd zapped him with before releasing him not to mention all the fun stuff happening in between had left him feeling less than peachy. But the sooner he got his statement down, the sooner he could go back to being Very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, investigator.

"It was some sort of voice changer," said Tony. Sounded like Darth Vader with laryngitis.

* * *

His cheek stinging from the slap he had just received, Tony turned his head towards the direction the voice had come from. "You know you really ought to see a Doctor about that throat. Maybe get some lozenges to suck on." This time the blow came from behind Tony. But apart from the swish of cloth through the air, there had been no sound of movement, and Tony held back a smile. Now if he could get them to move around a bit, listen to their footsteps, maybe he could start to figure out who they were. But strain as he might, Tony couldn't hear anything apart from the tones of the voice changer.

###################

"There were at least two of them," he said. "One asking the questions, and one pointing out when I got the wrong answer." He rubbed the side of his face, wincing slightly.

"Knew it'd be more than a one man op," said Gibbs.

"So is there *anything* useful you can tell us about your abduction?" asked Vance, a note of impatience in his voice.

Tony didn't blame him for being impatient. The embezzlement case had been on their desks for over a week now, and while they'd managed to narrow down the suspect pool considerably, there was still nothing concrete that they could use. Legal had made noises about fishing expeditions and had refused to even try to get search warrants issued until the potential suspects could be reduced to double digits.

But somewhere along the line they must have rattled the right cage, because Tony had disappeared en route to conduct some follow up interviews, and reappeared twenty-four hours later with a number of new bruises to add to his collection but no idea as to who had inflicted them.

"Yeah, I can tell you something," said Tony, his patience wearing thin. "One of them was a woman."

"And you know this how exactly?" asked Vance.

"Because when she zapped me with the taser, she got close enough that I could smell her perfume," snapped Tony.

"Would you recognize it again?" asked Gibbs.

"I guess so," said Tony, shrugging. "Why? We gonna stake out the perfume counter at Macy's?"

"Nope," said Gibbs, standing up from the table. "Gonna take you down to Abby, let her help you ID it."

"There's no way Agent DiNozzo will be able to identify a suspect just by the smell of their perfume," said Vance. "Any judge would laugh us out of court if we tried to get a warrant based on that alone."

"Then we'll see if Abby can jog Tony's memory, find out what else he sniffed out. Maybe narrow the field that way. Unless you got any better ideas, *Leon*?"

Vance shook his head slowly.

* * *

"Oh my God, Tony! I'm so glad you're okay!" Tony was nearly knocked off his feet by the force of Abby's hug. "We were all so worried about you! Gibbs was drinking twice as much coffee as he usually does!" Her arms tightened around Tony's body making him gasp for breath.

"Easy there Abs," said Tony, "I'm fine. Really." He managed to disentangle himself from Abby and took in a deep breath of air. "I'm..." Frowning slightly, he sniffed at Abby's hair. "Have you been doing ballistic testing today?"

Abby shook her head, almost hitting Tony in the face with a pigtail. "No, but I am wearing my gunpowder based perfume today. I added a squeeze of lemon to give it a bit more zing!"

Tony whirled round to face Gibbs, "Gunpowder," he said, "One of them had it all over their hands."

Gibbs pulled out his phone, "McGee! Cross reference our suspect pool with the on base firing range. See who had their hands on a weapon in the past forty eight hours." He disconnected the call. "Abby, work with Tony. Anything else he smelt, I want it identified."

"Guess it's time to put the DiNozzo nose to good use," said Abby. Grabbing Tony's hand, she dragged him across the lab.

* * *

"I'm not really sure about this, Abs," said Tony. He pulled at the scarf that Abby was tying over his eyes. "Can't I just promise to keep my eyes shut?"

"We need to get you to focus on scent," said Abby, replacing the scarf. "This way you won't be tempted to peek. Plus it'll help to recreate the situation you were in when you got a whiff of the original scent."

"You want to tie me up too?"

"Ooh, tempting, but I left my best handcuffs at home. Still, I've got some duct tape around if you want to give it a go."

"I was joking," said Tony, quickly. The blindfold will do. He swallowed hard as the lab disappeared from his view. "I'm in Abby's lab," he told himself. "I can take off the blindfold any time I want." He wanted to call out to Abby, to let her voice reassure him as to his surroundings even as she made her preparations. But his mouth was dry, and besides, it was ridiculous to feel nervous just because he couldn't see anything. He would have welcomed the sound of her usual music but that was switched off, presumably so as not to distract his focus. The faint sound of containers being rattled and opened was all that Tony could hear.

Tony didn't know why he was so unsettled after the abduction. Hell it hadn't even made his personal top five 'worst captivities ever'. True, he'd been smacked around a bit but he'd had worse from Gibbs on an average day. And the car trunk they'd transported him in before dumping him in an alley, while cramped, had at least been fairly clean. Hmm, thought Tony, as he tried to remember exactly how clean it had smelt. Maybe he could get Ziva to pick the locks on all the suspect's cars, see if any of them smelled familiar.

Gathering his thoughts, Tony took a deep breath to try and settle himself before Abby could notice anything, and that was when he smelt it, the raw tones of sawdust that could only be from one man.

"Get focused, Tony," he heard Gibbs say. "I've got your six."

"On it, Boss," said Tony, relaxing for the first time in days. "On it."


End file.
